A new blatant intervention of the European Commission was triggered by the decision of the third Court of Appeal of Athens on August 1st, on the hearing of the former President of ELSTAT (Hellenic Statistical Authority), Andreas Georgiou, for repeated breach of duty. By Leonidas Vatikiotis The provocative intervention of the European Commission (indication of their great discomfort over the decision of the ...

Thessaloniki is a lively sprawling metropolis located in the north of Greece. As with the rest of the country, it is affected by increasing unemployment and poverty, a result of the government's Troika-dictated policies, which have driven the economy into a deep recession. ...

The crisis that started in the United States in 2007-2008, hit the European Union head on in 2008, and has been causing major problems in the eurozone since 2010. [1]| Banks from the strongest European countries are responsible for spreading this plague from the United States to Europe, because they had invested massively in structured financial products. It is important to explain why this crisis has struc ...

Almost four years after Athens's debt crisis exploded – forcing EU mandarins to rewrite the book of fiscal rules – mistrust, anger and thinly disguised panic have returned to strain Greece's relations with its lenders at the EU, European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF). ...

I have just attended the 10th annual Historical Materialism conference in London where I presented a paper (among hundreds of others) and heard the contributions of many others. But more on that in my next post. ...

Are the economic policies needed to maintain the euro still compatible with democracy? Greece’s state broadcaster was established after the fall of the military dictatorship. Last month the Greek government (which is implementing EU injunctions) decided to shut it down without authorisation from parliament (see Where Syriza stands). ...

Portugal's political crisis has deepened with the resignation of foreign minister Paulo Portas, in a move which could trigger the collapse of the ruling coalition government. Mr Portas heads junior coalition party CDS-PP, which guarantees the government's parliamentary majority. ...

You can find the recent report from IMF on Greece here: Link [pdf] Some read the recent IMF report on Greece as a mea culpa for its mistakes in the Greek bailout. We see it differently. You can say sorry for an unintended mistake, a miscalculation. The case we have here is not an accident. IMF’s inhumane and otherwise ineffective policies are not, as IMF asserts, the result of a methodological error, simply ...

About ReINFORM

ReINFORM is a political group of Greeks living in the Netherlands. We met in the summer of 2011 at the squares of Europe to protest against the policies and the practices that facilitate a vast transfer of wealth from the unprivileged many to the privileged few. Read more...